Fire Up the Cannons For Me, Sweet Honey Baby
by The juju was up inside my horn
Summary: Drinking. Dancing. Bickering. Awkward clumsy funtimes.


**Disclaimer:** I own nothing and make no profit. All things Boosh belong to Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding. Freelance Scientist is from that old Metz advert. Title from Hawksley Workman's song Paper Shoes.

**Summary:** Drinking. Dancing. Bickering. Awkward clumsy sexing.

**Fire Up the Cannons For Me, Sweet Honey Baby**

Vince had already had a skinful. He seemed to be _just_ in that brilliant perfect place between sober and throwing up where everything is beautiful and you feel like you own the world, laughing and glowing and eyeing people up and being eyed up in return. Howard, on the other hand, was a morose, self-conscious drunk, bored out of his mind, filled with loathing for all the vapid peacocks strutting around town on Saturday nights, and half a hair away from faking an urgent phonecall from Naboo just so he'd have an excuse to get away - but then, he thought, it was always like that, wasn't it? Hardly seemed worth changing the way of things now. And maybe it was contributing to some kind of internal tally of Vince's. Enough of these wretched nights out with him and he'd come and try a jazz club? Maybe? Maybe not.

Vince suddenly grabbed his arm with over-excited scrabbly fingers and pulled him down to say something, shrill in Howard's ear over the awful so-called 'music' pounding round the room: "Oh, no way! I don't believe it, that bartender's got an eyepatch on!"

Nasty memories started to bubble, helicopters and Fossil and recklessness, and Howard took his mental pin and methodically popped them, one by one.

"Don't be stupid. That's not an eyepatch, that's a-" (quick quick quick think think think) "-candlestick?"

"Are you sure?"

Vince twisted, trying to get another look at the barman who was showing off and spinning bottles over the other side of the packed club, but Howard grabbed both pointy elbows and kept him steady, walking him to the dancefloor like a Zimmer frame.

"Just, let's get this over with, okay? Do what you need to do, dance your fill. I want to go home, and sooner rather than later, if you wouldn't mind."

He stood there with his arms folded, scowling crossly, trying his hardest not to budge an inch even when the other dancers bumped into him in case it looked like he was joining in. Vince just laughed and threw himself into the middle of the action like a little kid in a ballpond.

"Get us a drink, then!" he yelled, and he was gone in a thud of bass and a flash of glitter, lost in the sweaty crowd.

...

An hour later Vince was still dancing, but he'd been generous enough to move over to the bar so Howard could sit down. He looked ridiculous, Howard privately thought, bopping around like that on his own, although it was clear nobody else in the club had the brain capacity to realise that because Vince was going through his inventory of the night's numerous casual sex proposals.

"...and there's this woman somewhere, her and her friend, what do you think? They said I could go back but, maybe, I dunno, her friend was a bit of a moose, though, her nailpaint was all chipped. Or - alright, mate?" Vince stopped talking for a minute and returned the come-and-get-it grin of a man giving him the eye on his way to the gents' until he'd gone right the way across the room and disappeared through the door. "Bet you anything he'd be up for it, too."

Howard wondered whether beating his own head on the bar or Vince's would be the best course of action.

"Does it always have to be about this? Can't you just go out and have a good time and go home at the end of the night _without_ the risk of disease and babies with complete strangers?"

"Iiiii'm pretty sure I'm not gonna get pregnant, Howard..."

"Not you, you berk, those-" a delicate little cough "-_ladies_."

"As if that's gonna happen! You've seen how tight my trousers are, if there's anything left alive in there it'll be a miracle."

Now he had nasty mental images he could really do without. Three hundred million little sperm-cells with Vince's face, crammed into his balls like immigrants in a lorry, malnourished, cramped, suffocating...

"That's nice." (It wasn't.)

"I'm going home with _someone_."

"You could just call it a night and come home with _me_."

Howard was slightly taken aback by the amount of laughter this brought on.

"Yeah, but it wouldn't be like _that_, though, would it?"

"No, but... I fail to see what's so amusing, Vince."

"Come on."

"How dare you? You don't even laugh at my jokes, why are you hysterical when I'm not being funny?"

"Come _on_, Howard! I mean, no offence, right? But I wouldn't get off with you if my life depended on it."

Howard was suddenly swamped by a massive wave of fury, and somewhat surprised at the weight of it for the few seconds it took him to justify it. Being dragged out to the pub when he had an exciting new delivery of highlighter pens to test and sort was one thing, the few quiet drinks becoming a pub crawl was another, the pub crawl becoming an excuse for Vince to go dancing safe and carefree in the knowledge that no matter how drunk and tired he got there'd be a wallflower waiting to prop him up and sort out a taxi and look after the house keys and hold his hair back if he got sick, that was another, and now to top it all off he was being laughed at as well? As if the idea of somebody wanting to go home with him 'like _that_' was fantastical and ridiculous and - of course it _was_ a fantastical and ridiculous idea, Howard reminded himself, which cranked the rage up a few notches more.

"No, of course you wouldn't," he said, "because you've _already_ got off with me when your life depended on it, haven't you?"

An unsteady, uncertain pause. "Shut your face."

"Can't do anything twice over, no sir, that'd be like wearing the same stupid little mirrorball babygro two days running."

"I mean it, Howard, shut it."

"Unthinkable, isn't it? Sameness, predictability, normality... you know, though, your _un_predictability is predictable in itself. AHA! Now _there's_ a puzzle for you, little man, a nice little paradox, all these affectations, how you strive for originality, you know? It's jus-"

Then Vince flung his arm forwards and drowned the rest of Howard's words in neon flirtini.

"Yeah, you weren't expecting that, though, were you?" He slammed his glass onto the bar and stalked off to rejoin the crush of bodies on the dancefloor.

"Tiff?" the barman asked casually, as he whipped the towel off his shoulder with a debonair sort of flourish and offered it to Howard.

"Pardon me, sir. _Lovers_ have tiffs," Howard said, with as much dignity as a man can manage when he's wringing a champagne cocktail out of his moustache. "Friends have..." What _did_ friends have? Arguments? Scraps? Heated words? Really, "tiff" was the only word that seemed to work for an altercation that ended with one party getting a drink in the face, he realised miserably, and didn't bother finishing the sentence. It didn't look like the barman was listening anyway. What was the point of even leaving the house? Nobody paid any attention to him.

_Urge to Chinese-burn self getting very difficult to resist_, said Howard's brain, and to distract it he quickly said out loud, "Are you going to serve me or not?" Because getting falling-down drunk, _that_ would make everything better! Possibly get too drunk to remember his moves, get mugged, lose the keys and money, then what? Wouldn't show Vince anything, though, he realised. He'd find some way of sorting himself out and Howard would be the one staggering home on weary feet with two black eyes and a broken nose...

He drank half his new pint in one go. Chase away the mental pictures. Anaesthetic for the upcoming mugging. Good excuse to glare at the bloke in the eyepatch over the rim of his glass.

"Your lady friend's quite the mover."

Howard licked foam off his lips but he could still taste flirtini.

"My lady friend's name is Vince."

The barman didn't seem bothered. He just shrugged and grinned, an easy sort of smile leaning coolly and casually against a dimple. Howard watched him watching the dancefloor and resisted the urge to follow his gaze for, oh, at _least_ three seconds before caving.

Vince was dancing - no surprises there. It was the cat's cradle suddenly building itself out of his stomach and pipes that surprised him. He took another gulp of his drink and just watched.

You had your wild dancing drunks and e-poppers, flailing around the floor in crazy spinning circles, laughing and dizzy and too far gone to care they were banging into people, then there were the artsy types for whom dancing was a carefully-planned process intended only to show off the way their outfit caught the light from the glitterball overhead as they jerked in self-conscious time to the music - and then there was Vince. Even in the heaving crowd of people he looked like he was alone. He didn't seem to notice anybody else, or to care that the heat and jostling were working in tandem to wilt his hair like an old flower. His eyes were closed. He was lost in it. This was beyond pulling shapes to look cool, this was about twining round the bassline and breathing in the notes, and Howard watched in silence. A sad lonely little germ of something he didn't really feel like acknowledging began to sob like a baby somewhere deep in his gut, but he threatened it with his mental pin and it subsided.

"D'you feel that?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"You know exactly what I mean. That sort of... judder."

"Are you trespassing in my brain? Because I think you should know, sir, before you go any further, Howard Moon's got moves."

"There's no need for that. Let me explain. I'm a freelance scientist..."

...

Another half an hour later they were in the taxi, Vince had his tongue lodged firmly down the bartender's throat, and Howard was feeling mentally and visually defiled by the whole sorry mess in a way he thought he probably shouldn't find quite as oddly pleasant as he did. Like one of those annoying bruises you get, the sort you keep poking to check if they still hurt, even though you know they do. He sighed loudly, theatrically, but got no response and had to do it again but a proper one, because sighing's a good non-violent way of venting a bit of frustration when you're trying to kick your habit of halfhearted self-harm. He folded his arms and stared fixedly out the car window at the blur of neon lights, trying to ignore the murmurs and groans and soggy lip-smacking. The rain was whacking down like it held some kind of longstanding grudge against the pavements. It was good weather for a sulk.

He didn't even _like_ men, but that was entirely beside the point.

He was the one who'd had his drink spiked (he was quite sure) by the perverted cyclops behind the bar, he was the one who'd been made to feel all fuzzy and juddery inside, he was the one who should be on his way home for a thorough bumming, and yet _Vince_ was the one getting the action after putting in none of the prep time. How was that fair? It's not fair, said his brain. It's really not. It's NOT FAIR!

"It's only alcohol," the barman had been saying earlier, "monkeying around inside you, twanging you like a guitar string. Peripherovascular dilation, makes you think it's lust. Course, then you get all the problems that go with. Jealousy polevaulting all your synapses. That inability to look away at anything else. Stiffy."

Howard finished his beer and chose to ignore the last comment.

"But I _don't_ think it's lust," he said. "I think it's a little annoyance-frustration sundae, sprinkled with aggravation and topped with a cherry."

"Oh, you're a virgin?"

It was a pity he'd finished his pint and couldn't do a Vince and throw it. He was sorely tempted to throw the glass instead. Bounce it right off the middle of the fucking eyepatch.

Only then Vince had appeared, cheerful and smiling again. He could never hold on to anger for long, especially when he was dancing. It was like it got sweated out of him or something. He slung his arm around Howard's waist and went up on tiptoe to give him an indulgent, forgiving kiss on the cheek, but he was looking at the barman.

"Alright?" he said. And: "I like your eyepatch."

That was the beginning.

Now they were going back to the flat and it was bouncy-bouncy for Vince and sofa-and-blanket for Howard. And earplugs. Nick Vince's iPod, maybe, wipe off all the electro tripe and fill it with Dizzy Gillespie, that'd show him.

It took Howard several minutes of wallowing in his rotten mood to realise that somebody had a hand on his knee.

...

"Can I have a word?"

"Yeah, I'm a bit busy, Howard..."

"Won't be a minute."

"Alright, but make it a quick one."

"You're really going ahead with this, then?"

"Er... well, I don't think he came all this way for a nice cup of tea."

"I don't like him. He spiked my drink. He made me go all juddery."

"He _made_ you go all juddery? Howard, you've had about seventeen billion pints."

"But-"

"And, look, I don't wanna be rude, but if anybody's drink was gonna get spiked by some pervert I _think_ it'd be mine."

It wasn't even arrogance, when he said things like that, it was just innocent, unmalicious truth. Somehow that was even worse.

"Fine. Just... you know. If he does anything you don't want, or he tries to make _you_ do anything you don't want, or you want to stop and he doesn't, or anything like that, shout and I'll come."

"..."

"Come _running_. Bust in there and put a move on him, okay?"

"Okay, Dad."

"Vince."

"_Okay_, Howard!"

"I'm just looking out for you, you know?"

"I know."

"I mean, we all like having fun, but it's even more fun when we can have _safe_ fun."

"You always say that! What are you, my personal minder?"

"You do seem to need one sometimes."

A tiny cough burst through the air like a gunshot and made them spring apart.

"Are you two coming?"

"No, we're just standing funny." Howard did a nervous barking laugh but nobody else joined in. His head was spinning. He felt a bit sick. Two?

"Two?" Vince mouthed silently, eyebrows quirked in confusion, then all at once he was laughing and taking Howard's hand to pull him towards the bedroom door, where the bartender was already working on his cravat.

"Forget looking out for me," Vince said, "'cause I think you've pulled."

...

"You enjoying this, are you?" Howard asked. He pressed the words in a low, secret murmur against Vince's ear, not wanting the barman to hear. Vince's hair tickled his nose. He stifled a sneeze, tried disguising the words as kisses, feeling awkward and drunk and silly and terribly, terribly virginal even as he lay there with his cock hard and hurting, peeping embarrassed through the fingers of his cupped hands, while he and his best friend watched another man lick a damp, shining line up the inside of Vince's thigh.

"Yeah," Vince breathed. His eyes were nearly closed but he opened them to look at Howard, bright blue ringed in smudged black and tiny, tiny beads of sweat he kept rubbing away with his fingers so his eyelashes stuck together in little spikes of clogged make-up. "Why, aren't you?"

"The man's a raving imbecile."

"Yeah, _in_ an eyepatch."

He'd started to take it off with the rest of his clothes but Vince hadn't let him.

"Do you _ever_ think of anything except accessories?"

"Do you really want an answer to that?"

All this in breathless, hitching whimpers, words so quiet they were almost tasted rather than heard, ghosting lightly over ears and lips. Vince slid his fingers into Howard's hair, not doing anything, just holding him there. His eyes were closed again.

"Just relax, yeah?" he said. "It's only sex. You don't have to do anything if you don't want, _you're_ the one who wouldn't let me be alone with a strange man, just relax and shut up."

"But-"

"Howard, aren't you _ever_ gonna shut up?"

A momentary - and, he decided for the split second between the words leaving his mouth and the results they got, stupid - stab of bravery: "Aren't you ever gonna make me?" Then Vince was laughing softly into Howard's mouth, around his tongue, kissing him and kissing and kissing, sweet and slobbery with alcoholic enthusiasm. One shaking hand clutched to regain its grip on Howard's hair, the fingers of the other wound through the barman's, snagging for a second on the string holding his eyepatch before the barman moved up the bed, shifted position, licked the line higher, higher, higher, up Vince's leg and over his hip, around and up his cock like a helter skelter in reverse - Howard wasn't looking but he knew, he could tell, his hand was skittering nervously down Vince's body and he could read his goosebumps and skinny ribs like Braille. Every single twitch and shiver seemed to hold a thesaurus of meaning: _yes, please, oh, there, now, more, yes, yes, yes_. The kissing was clumsy - his inexperience and Vince's squirming and gasping, it wasn't a great match - and he only persevered a minute more before pulling back and resting his head on Vince's sweaty shoulder. The air felt thick and heavy like treacle and he was sure he could feel the vibrations of Vince's pulse just inches from his face, beating quickly as if exalting in winning the race with his rapid breaths.

The barman was mumbling something and Howard smacked away the crazy urge to tell him off for speaking with his mouth full. Dirty foreplay to buggery was all well and good but it was no excuse for bad manners - mad laughter started fizzing up like the froth in a dropped pop bottle, it was like he suddenly realised where they were and what they were doing and how absolutely ridiculous it must look to a fly on the wall. His little compound eyes, like a pornographic kaleidoscope...

"It's not funny." Vince wasn't even gasping any more, he was kind of wheezing, pulling bizarre twisted cross-eyed faces and making pathetic desperate noises vaguely like an elephant. He reached for Howard's hand and squeezed, like he was trying to anchor himself so he wouldn't float away, but Howard had been using his hands as a sort of makeshift fleshy codpiece ever since losing his underwear. He stopped laughing immediately and went very still.

If the barman hadn't chosen that exact moment to unplug his mouth and speak, the night would have turned out a bit differently.

"There's a little bit of your brain called the hypothalamus," he said, "about the size of a butter bean, pumping out oxytocin through your pituitary gland, and-"

Howard put a move on him.

"Nick his eyepatch!" Vince yelled from back in the bedroom.

...

It seemed like a very long time later when Howard went back into the bedroom, but it couldn't have been. His knuckles still hurt like hell from where they'd banged amateurishly into the barman, his throat was still scratchy from roaring, and his face was still wet with the rain he'd dragged the bloke into by his hair.

Vince hadn't moved.

"Put it on, then."

Howard held the eyepatch gingerly between thumb and forefinger and thought about how wearing the thing was somewhere only slightly below 'not shagging Vince' on the list of Things Howard Moon Does Not Want To Do Tonight, but then he glanced at Vince, saw the way he was chewing on his lower lip and the hazy unfocused look of need in his eyes, and hastily pulled the string over his head and adjusted the patch into place. So Vince apparently had some sick fantasy of getting bummed by a pirate, any pirate. Okay.

He approached the bed slowly, expecting Vince to crack up laughing any minute and tell him to get lost, it was all a joke, but Vince just lay there breathing rapidly, his eyes locked on Howard's. Well, one of them.

"I look a tit, don't I?"

Vince swallowed hard. "Yeah, but who doesn't like tits?"

For about the length of time it took to do five shaky inhale-exhales and think lots of jumbled shards of thoughts like _oh shit_ and _this is really happening_, Howard just looked at Vince, the absolute picture of debauchery: smeared with make-up and spit like a sort of glam clown prostitute, the sheet he'd pulled halfway up himself doing little to nothing to disguise his abandoned erection. If anything it drew attention to it. Sort of... swaddled, like a new statue about to be unveiled in a big posh ceremony.

"If you're just going to giggle at me," Vince said quietly, "you can fuck off and I'll do it meself."

"I'm not giggling," Howard said, although he was, and he tried to stop so Vince wouldn't feel like he was being laughed at _and_ lied to, because nobody needs that when they're naked and hard.

He sat on the bed, awkward and kind of terrified, until he felt hot, hesitant fingers on his arm, and the two of them fumbled and stuttered until it all seemed to be working. There were legs slid between legs and hands wound through hair and tongues in mouths and all sorts of thrusting and whimpering.

"Didn't I tell you I'm a massive gayist?" Howard said. He'd aimed a kiss badly and had a mouthful of Vince's hair but it was okay, everything was okay.

Vince didn't seem to have breath enough to laugh, but he managed a shaky kind of sigh. "You're as fickle as I am."

"How dare you?"

"Please stop talking now."

...

It loomed in front of his face like... well, similes weren't going to cut it here. Like nothing he'd ever seen before. Of course he'd seen his own, he was very well acquainted with his own, but he'd never seen one quite so close and, somehow, it was making him really, really want to laugh again because he was kind of embarrassed and because the situation was ridiculous and because there wasn't enough blood in his alcoholstream and because he was _wearing an eyepatch_ and because there was just something hilarious about it all, Vince squirming around on the rucked-up sheets being all desperate and slutty and pleading while Howard fought off mad drunken giggles and had a stare-off with his cock.

"You're laughing again," Vince said. His hands were trembling. He slid one back into Howard's hair, trying to get him to move. "You do know that's really really shit manners, yeah? When you're doing it? You're not meant to laugh, it's rude."

That was even funnier. He slumped helplessly against Vince, snorts and laughter muffled against his pale thigh, all the more hysterical when it made Vince go even squirmier and slap him feebly round the head and shoulder, too weak with need to put any real force into it.

"Should've kicked _you_ out in the rain and kept that other bloke here."

"Vince, he was an _arse_!"

"Yeah, but at least he knew how to _find_ my arse. And STOP LAUGHING!" he yelled, when Howard collapsed again.

"I'm sorry, it's just... funny."

"What's funny? I'm here bollock-naked and hard as a _rock_ for you and you're just laughing at me. D'you even know how many people'd kill to be where you are?"

"It's not for me, though, is it, really? It's the eyepatch. You just like pirates. You've got this sick little fantasy, haven't you? You're a, a cabin boy or something, and there's this tall dark handsome captain..."

Vince squeaked like a little mouse at that, and Howard just about managed to fight down the simmering laughter enough to concentrate and wrap his fingers around Vince's cock. The angle was weird - he was used to coming at it from the top, after all, not from below - but it seemed to be doing the trick; Vince was cross-eyed and gasping and arching up off the mattress, fingers pulling at Howard's hair, then slipping to trace gently around the edges of the black eyepatch.

"Just... please, _please_ shut up now. Do what the barman was doing, yeah? It's easy, you'll get it. Just. _Please_, Howard."

Not-laughing was still a bit of a problem. He was sure sex wasn't supposed to be this funny. Sex was supposed to be beautiful and serious and meaningful and romantic, possibly with some quiet Miles Davis to get the mood going, or a bit of poetry recitation. He was sure it wasn't supposed to be _funny_, and quite sure sex didn't usually involve wearing other men's eyepatches and being bossed around and smacked for not getting on with the job.

Of course, it was also supposed to be with an elegant, sophisticated lady, so maybe none of the other bits really counted here.

Do what the barman was doing. Good advice. What _had_ the barman been doing? Howard tried to remember in order. Everything was a bit of a jumble. He'd been far too concerned with prudishly keeping his genitalia hidden as Vince stripped him naked to really pay any attention to what the other bloke had been doing. Kissing first, there'd been an awful lot of kissing. Well, he'd kissed Vince already, too. What then? Nipple-licking, maybe. He didn't really want to lick Vince's nipple. How stupid would he feel then? He wrinkled his nose, imagining it. Ugh. No thank you, sir. No, he was down here already, he'd just get on with it. How difficult could it be, anyway? If Vince with his tiny tiny brain and that pretentious berk with the sciencebabble and the cravat and the stupid stupid face-accessories could do it, then surely he, Howard Moon - intellectual, maverick, man of action, fast learner - could _breeze_ through a blowjob. He curled his fingers more closely around Vince's cock and slid his hand up and down a few times, slowly, more to keep Vince from getting all impatient and hitting him again while he studied it than anything else.

He was quite sure you were supposed to _want_ to put bits of the other person in your mouth when you were having sex, too. He didn't fancy it much. It was all... shiny, and angry-looking.

"You fucking laugh one more time and you're out that window."

Howard bit down hard on his lip and held his breath until it steadied. "Sorry."

"Yeah, you will be." Vince's fingers crept into his hair again, playing with the string holding his eyepatch in place, not being very subtle at all about trying to direct the proceedings. "Please," he said again. "Howard. Howard. Howard? Come on. Howard. Howard! Please. Howard?"

Howard went for it like taking a new and unpleasant-looking medicine - one big swallow, screwing his face up and bracing himself in case it tasted as horrible as it looked - and heard his name turn into a drawn-out, desperate whine in Vince's mouth, then his own mouth was suddenly full and he was spluttering and choking and coughing up semen all over his chin. It was up his nose, in his moustache, on his hands, sprayed across Vince, who said, "Oh shit," in a tiny hollow voice and pulled a fluffy purple pillow over his face, apparently trying to commit suicide.

"I swear that's never happened before," he said, muffled and anguished. "I _swear_. I mean, course it's _happened_ before, but I swear not that quick. Or. Oh god. Howard. Shit."

"It's okay." It was more than okay. Howard felt MAGNIFICENT, even as he retched slightly from coughing so hard and the sour, unfamiliar taste coating his throat and lungs. His very first blowjob, and the recipient had lasted less than three seconds! Surely that had to be some kind of record. He couldn't wait to spread this around. Regain a bit of the respect he'd lost at his birthday party. Who would have expected a _virgin_ to be so talented? Must be all those years of trumpet practice. That'd teach Vince to mock jazz. Ha!

Vince looked terrified, though, huge eyes peeping at Howard over the top edge of the pillow. "You won't tell anybody, will you?"

Howard deflated slightly and stopped scripting his sexual boasts in his head.

"It's just. Oh god. I'm really sorry. I just... I really like eyepatches."

"Oh."

"Yeah. Don't laugh, 'cause I'll probably cry and then you'll feel guilty and it'll get all weird and you won't look me in the eye any more and we'll go on like everything's normal and it won't be and I don't want it all weird so please don't laugh at me again, okay? Okay?"

Howard said, "Okay," because it _was_, really, but Vince didn't seem all that convinced so he snatched the pillow away and kissed him firmly until he relaxed in a way that was more like melting.

"Please, please," he kept saying, squashing the words against Howard's lips because he didn't seem to want to stop kissing long enough to let them spread out properly like words are supposed to do. "You can still... please, come on, I want you, _please_."

"You don't want me. You just want the nearest available person to slap on an eyepatch and bum you silly."

"_Fuck_ the eyepatch," Vince said vehemently, ripping the string off Howard's head and throwing it to the carpet somewhere then diving on him in a kiss that made all the ones before seem like ghosts or shadows. Howard could hear himself making unmanly, desperate sorts of noises around Vince's insistent tongue, but Vince was doing the same and they were alone now so what did it matter? Vince's hair was in his eyes, hanging down around their faces like an old photographer's curtain, falling in their mouths and getting covered in spit. Howard stroked it back, tucking it behind Vince's ears. He half-expected to get yelled at for putting his big dirty mitts all over a piece of art (the general response any time he accidentally touched Vince's hair), but Vince was wriggling about on top of him, actually pushing his head into Howard's hands like a cat begging for fuss, so he went on stroking, combing his fingers through the sweaty, spitty tangles and letting Vince kiss him. It wasn't the sort of kiss even the _most_ experienced person could get a say in, he thought; Vince kissed like the world was ending, making little hungry noises, sucking Howard's bottom lip, the wet, smooth slide of his tongue on Howard's and flicking around his teeth. Howard was quite happy to just lie there on the mountain of pillows with his hands scrunched in Vince's hair and let him have his way.

"You're meant to say you want me too," Vince said, tearing himself away for breath and propping himself up with his palms flat either side of Howard's head, looking down at him with such an open expression that Howard found he could read him like a book, only it was an avant-garde sort of book without much of a story or dialogue, just the word "lust" written out a hundred thousand times. "You do, don't you? You're not just going along with it 'cause you wanna get some, you do actually want _me_, yeah?"

"Since when has that ever mattered to you?"

"Since _now_!"

"I want you." He untangled his hands from Vince's hair, leaving it sticking out in every direction like a cartoon witch, and skimmed them over his shoulders, down the sides of his body to his hips. He shifted very slightly, and they both made funny little noises feeling Howard's hard cock nudging gently against Vince's arse. "Show me what to do. I want you."

"Give me your hand."

Howard expected Vince to start sucking on his fingers when he brought the hand up to his mouth, so it took a few confused moments for him to realise what was going on and snatch the hand away again, cradling it close to his chest like he was injured.

"Heyyy, little man, what are you doing?"

"Biting your fingernails off." Gentle but insistent, he held Howard's hand again and bent his head over it.

This felt... weird, Howard thought, watching the tiny movement of Vince's jaw working at his fingertips. After everything they'd done, this was somehow closest to the boundary of what was and was not acceptable.

"...Mind if I ask why?"

Vince spat a little white sliver of nail over the side of the bed. "No."

"So, why?"

"You can do it yourself if you want. They're too long."

"Excuse me. My nails are neat and well-maintained. It's important for a shopkeeper to have nice fingernails. You're ruining them."

"They're too long."

"For what?"

"You're such a virgin."

"This better be worth it."

Vince just grinned and spat out a final little curve of fingernail, then flopped on his front to hang over the side of the bed and start rooting through the cabinet drawer. He returned with a little tube and a metallic red square.

"Believe it or not," he said, "johnnies are _not_ for wanking in so you don't mess up your sleeping bag."

Howard just Looked at him, the sort of Look that really deserves the capital letter. "Thank you, Vince, I'm not a retard."

"Just saying. Catch."

He threw the tube at Howard, who didn't even bother trying to catch it but just let it slap against his chest and fall onto the bed so he could pick it up, but before he could look at it properly Vince seemed to be coming at him from every angle at once so all he could see was the flick of long black hair and various stretches of flushed skin and smudgy make-up.

"What- mmfgh!"

More kissing, then. And - oh. More kissing, with Vince's fingers sliding down his belly to touch him at the same time. Even better. And - oh. Double, triple oh. Vince's fingers were dripping wet and slippery, closing in a hot circle around the head of his cock. Howard tried very hard not to make any more silly undignified unmanly noises, but a few sneaked out anyway. He squeezed his eyes shut. His breathing sounded harsh and very loud in his ears, and Vince was laughing quietly, but not in a nasty way, he just sounded pleased and like he wasn't getting enough breath either.

"Good, innit?"

"Yes..."

"My turn now." He grabbed Howard's hand, the one with the nails chewed down to the quick, and slathered his fingers in the stuff from the tube. "It's easy, just... take it slow, do one first."

"One what?"

"Finger."

"Oh. OH! Euw." Howard felt his nose scrunch up and tried to smooth it out again because he didn't want to hurt Vince's feelings, it honestly wasn't anything personal, but _come on_. "Put my fingers... _there_?"

"Howard. Where exactly d'you think you're about to put your cock?"

"Yes, but that's..." He ran out of words and gestured to the rubber, still in its little foil packet.

"Well, you can put a johnny on your fingers if you want but I _will_ put it on MySpace and you'll get laughed at from eighty different countries at once, so. Your call."

"Is this really necessary?"

"You wanna let me bum you dry first?"

"Er, no thanks."

"Exactly."

So, feeling slightly disgusted at the whole thing and even more disgusted at himself for getting all weird and hot in the face and excited by how disgusting it was, he pressed one wet fingertip inside Vince. "There. Okay?"

"Yes. Oh god. Okay." Vince sounded like nothing in the world had ever been quite this okay before. Howard started to feel slightly better about it. There was something about the way Vince looked with his mouth all slack like that and his eyes almost closed that could make him feel better about _anything_, Howard thought in a funny fuzzy little daze, sliding his finger in deeper, pulling it back and pushing two in at once. Vince whimpered. He was all hot and soft on the inside. Howard thought his face probably looked like a gigantic tomato. He felt very very uncomfortably warm. He wished Vince would close his eyes properly; he was pretty sure he was blushing like a schoolgirl, and that's not the sort of thing a man likes to share with the world.

"Another one," Vince said, so Howard pushed a third finger in with the other two, squeezing more goo out onto his hand first. Vince laughed softly. "Initiative, I like."

"I'm Howard Moon, sir, I don't do things by halves."

"So you keep telling me. Don't stop that, I'm just gonna..."

In no time at all, the condom was on and Vince was straddling him, sinking down all hot and tight around him, making an odd little happy noise in the back of his throat. This is it, Howard thought, giddy and drunk and gleeful, I'm having sex, this is _it_.

It was okay. It was pretty good. He was sure it was going to get better. It was just weird. Overwhelming.

"I'm having sex," he blurted out in surprise. Vince just laughed, starting to move more, up and down, long, smooth strokes.

"Yes," he said, "yes you are." Then: "Hey, Howard?" in a conversational tone that was at _serious_ odds with what they were doing.

"What?"

"I'm touching you." He did a cheeky, smirky sort of grin and stopped moving. "You don't like me touching you, do you?"

Pleading voice: "Vince."

"You're always telling me off for it. 'Ooh, don't touch me, sir! Never touch me! Not now, not ever, not when we're drunk off our tits and naked in bed, never touch me!' Should I stop?"

Warning voice, now: "Vince."

"'Cause, I will if you want. That barman can't've gone far..."

The next few seconds were a mad fumbly blur of images involving Howard tipping Vince over onto his back, shoving his knees up against his chest, and fucking him with a fierceness bordering on violence until Vince _finally_ stopped talking. He still made plenty of _noise_, but he stopped talking. Howard made a big mental note in thick scarlet imaginary felt-tip so he'd remember how to shut Vince up next time he started mouthing off, but he was fairly sure this wasn't something he was likely to forget - on the contrary, he wasn't sure he was ever going to be able to function properly again when his life morphed back into itself from the porn film it had decided to be tonight. Supermarket checkout, walk in the park, jazzercise, anything - Vince was flailing against the bed, hair all wild against the sheets, demanding it faster, harder, more, more, more in a voice that kept cracking and breaking off for wordless moans and sobs, and he couldn't imagine that kind of thing would be very easy to forget. Howard felt an odd shivery judder race down his spine. He remembered, out of nowhere, what that twat of a bartender had been saying about mistaking drunkenness for lust, and he scowled and moved even harder and shifted his weight onto one hand so he could wrap the other around Vince's cock and stroke it roughly in time with his thrusts, as if he could fuck the memory of him right out of Vince's body.

"You're not bad, for a virgin," Vince gasped, managing somehow to rock his hips down onto Howard's cock and up into his hand at the same time.

"Motivation," Howard said grimly, picturing the bartender's face with an axe in it. "Like all thespians, I-"

"Who's a lesbian?"

"Shut up."

"Okay. I'm gonna come now."

"Me too."

"You first."

"Is that standard procedure, going one after the other?"

"Just _go_, do it harder, I wanna feel you all week, come on..."

Slightly regretting his shut-Vince-up approach if it meant he'd been missing out on more ego-inflating little gems like that, Howard did as he was told and accidentally made more of those embarrassing little unmanly noises when he came, but it was okay because Vince was shrieking like a girl and pulling those daft faces again, which was _more_ embarrassing, and spurting like a fountain all over himself.

It was weird, he decided, this sex thing. Kind of disgusting. Kind of uncomfortable. Sticky. Noisy. Nevertheless, when Howard collapsed on his back on the smeared sheets, he did it with the biggest, smuggest grin on his face, thoroughly devirginised, exhausted and content, walking his fingers up and down the ladder of Vince's ribs.

...

Howard had always imagined post-orgasmic pillowtalk to be jigsaw pieces of philosophy and romance and maybe a little bit of poetry slotting together to create something deep and beautiful.

The reality went like this:

"You're so skinny. Your ribs are all pokey. I could play you like a xylophone."

"Can I do a joke about playing me like a bassoon instead?"

"A _bassoon_?"

"Yeah."

"Piccolo, maybe..."

"OI!"

...


End file.
